1 in 5 Android in-app purchases found to be fraudulent

Swrve has uncovered some worrying data with regards to in-app purchases on Android smart devices.

In a recent blog post, Swrve's Director of Marketing, Tom Farrell, reports on the company's analysis of all in-app purchase data on Android platforms in the month of May. The findings reveal that almost one in five in-app purchases (19%) on Android smart devices are fraudulent. These purchases deliver no revenue to the app developer.

Not only do fraudulent purchases affect overall revenue but, says Farrell, it can "lead to poor decision-making in data-driven organizations unable to filter out the counterfeit "noise"."

Furthermore, Swrve has observed that up to 90% of revenue events by value have been fraudulent during limited periods of time.

"When running in-app marketing campaigns or A/B testing user experience, revenue numbers reported may be wildly inaccurate and thus suggest ROI is delivered when it may not be the case," says Farrell. "Which as you can imagine is something of a problem."